Hold my Hand (Be my Anchor)
by captainodonewithyou
Summary: Just a CS bit based on all the suspicious talk about stabbing the Dark One on the episode tonight. Angst ahead!


The darkness that Rumplestiltskin had sent swirling through the town was not without very certain aim. Emma knows only this for certain as the cloud weighs heavy at her heart. In her mind, she knows that this is wrong. That the blue eyes trained heavy on her are aching, that the dagger he holds shaking to the Dark One's chest should be anywhere but there.

It is only the wrongness tugging at something lost within her that keeps her from blasting Hook away from the man who has become her master. The man who is everything that Hook has spent his life resenting. But still the dagger he holds heavy to his chest falters as those eyes fixate on her.

"I don't have to do this, Emma," he breathes, blue in his eyes turning to oceans as they fill with creeping tears. "I do not have to murder him."

She furrows her brow in suspicion at the strange words, but does not move closer to either protect or assist him, reaching behind her to run her fingers across the rough bark of the trunk she has herself backed up against.

"You can still beat it," he says, soft voice only just reaching her ears, "you can still come back to me."

Her heart thuds oddly as the words sink in, only to be grasped painfully back. She breathes in sharply at the pain, pressing fully back against the tree and squeezing her eyes shut as images of Tallahassee and jail bars and even _him_ leaving her to her own devices pierce determined at her from every direction.

"You're the savior. You are a _hero_. You give happy endings, you don't take them!"

The words fall heavy from his tongue and her heart beats in time with the pounding in her head, reminding her of everyone she has failed as she presses the bark harder into her spine. She feels the leather gripping her wrist and the stare of the gray eyes that accompanied it. The icy swan hung from her neck and the lost eyes of her son when he had seen her for the first time.

"Swan, you can fight this."

_If she wants him, she wants him on her own goddamn terms._

She clenches her teeth and presses back hard, pushing off the tree and opening her eyes as she takes a steady step towards him.

"You're a pirate," she hisses, "what do you know about _fighting _darkness?"

He breathes out slowly, eyes drifting painstakingly closed.

"We don't _have _to be apart," she tells him, shrugging a shoulder and waiting for his concerned eyes to creep barely open and again meet hers. "You once told me yourself that it isn't that hard to slip back into the darkness."

The words do not have the affect she intends them to, and his knuckles go nearly white around the dagger as his eyes soften on her.

"I cannot."

His throat bobs and still she cannot bring herself to blast him, something curtained deep in the darkness holding tight, grasping at her tingling magic and keeping her in check.

"You are a hero, love, even if this bloody curse has hidden that from you."

A tear tears itself free and begins a lazy roll down his cheek, but he stays his attention firm on her, pleading eyes forcing pain to well up in her chest.

"Even if I must brim with darkness for the rest of eternity, my love," he pauses, voice crumbling as he watches the stillness of her expression, "At least then you do not have to."

Even when his voice breaks, his hold on the dagger does not falter, and those eyes stay planted tearful on her as he buries the weapon home, cringing and unable to watch die the man he'd dreamed centuries of killing.

And in a rush, it all comes back to her at a force that nearly sends her stumbling. The gentle touches and the loving gazes. The swell in her heart when her name plays delicately past his tongue. The home he had given up for her. The happy ending he assured her with disbelief that _she was_. Every passionate kiss and every sweet embrace and every steady word of encouragement echo across her quivering body.

_Killian._

When her eyes fall on him, she knows it is far too late.

He has fallen sloppily to his knees at beside where the former dark one lays, bloodied dagger still clenched tight in his fist, white knuckles pressed hard to the forest floor.

Her breath catches scratchily in her throat.

_"Killian."_

She has fallen to her knees beside him before another thought reaches her mind. His head is hung limply downward, and she catches a glimpse of a rolling tear dropping from the tip of his nose.

"Oh God, _what did you do_."

Tears are burning at her eyes and she reaches to wipe blindly at her still-dry face, hand settling weakly over her mouth as she stifles a sob, staring down his arm where a sickly green pattern is beginning to paint its way across him.

She breathes in heavily to counteract another rippling sob reaching to touch his cheek and urge him to lift his head, to face her.

She never thought the ever-present fixture of self-resentment in his eyes could grow deeper.

_But it has._

He refuses to meet her eyes.

"Killian," she breathes though her nose, blinking again and again to force the tears back in her eyes. "Killian look at me, please."

He doesn't and she presses into his space because she needs to, needs _him_.

She touches his shoulder and his neck and his jaw until she is cradling both his cheeks and bowing her forehead to his, noses brushing, air mingling. She feels his jaw clench and unclench beneath her gentle touch and finally, _finally_, his eyes drift cautiously to hers.

"I had to." He breathes, words hardly forming past his barely-moving lips.

She swallows back a sob, pressing her forehead steadier to his.

"I know."

He stiffens and her eyes fall instinctively to where he still clenches the dagger, now portraying his name in large, shining letters. The green has scaled his entire arm now, disappearing beneath his shirt.

"Does it hurt?"

She speaks gently, returning her gaze to his.

"Not as much as losing you."

Her fight against tears is a losing battle, and she presses her eyes shut and her mouth into a tight line as some free themselves to race down her cheeks. When she opens them a green pad of thumb is hovered near her face, his expression troubled with contemplation. He drops his hand the moment she sees.

"Don't," she says tersely, pulling back just slightly to shake her head and catching sight of the skin creeping up his neck. She averts her gaze, finding his hand clenched back into a fist on the ground. She drags a hand from his cheek, reaching down to grasp it and pull it to her face.

He watches her movements tensely, refusing to unfist the hand as the growing color finally reaches his face.

"_Touch me_, Killian," she orders, quiet but firm.

He shies away, bowing his head away from her.

"I am now the same monster he was, Emma."

She tightens her grip on his hand when he tries to pull away, eyes still stunningly blue through the magic overcoming him.

"I was the monster, Killian, I know how to spot one. And you are still _you_."

He shakes his head and releases a bitter laugh, trying again with no avail to tug out of her steady grasp.

"You saved the happy endings of the entire town. You saved me. You are a hero, Killian."

His eyes are trained on his arm, and he shakes his head softly.

"Only after becoming what I despise most of all. You'd be far better to go live your happy ending without me."

"God, don't you know, Killian?" She breathes, shaking her head and letting go the tears that fall loose. His darkened eyes meet hers again, brow furrowed, "I don't have a happy ending without you in it."

(And perhaps he utters that he can stand being the crocodile in exchange for that, and maybe she lets him know in a whisper that he is still the most dashing rapscallion she knows. And maybe their lips meet tenderly at first but with more force as each in turn think of losses they never want to consider facing again.

Maybe as they kiss, the green hue slowly fades out of his skin.

Maybe when they notice he tells her that now she has done it, that he was just beginning to fancy the lizard look.

Perhaps she kisses the smile of her true love right off of his smug goddamn face.

"Tick tock, crocodile. The town might start to miss us.")


End file.
